Touching Stars
by amongthewinged
Summary: Survival isn't enough. We have to thrive, because thriving is the only way to truly live. But that comes with its own risk. The choice then, is do we hide and cower, or do we reach out and brave the danger in the hope of touching the stars?
1. The Schwarzschild Prodigy

_Disclaimer: I do not own Jumper._

* * *

The star had a strange, unconventional beauty up close. The surface swirled with plasma and hydrogen, an ever-changing landscape that _almost_ made sense. In the dream, everything almost made sense. Massive tendrils of starstuff rose up from the inferno, drifting towards her with slow grace. Sinuous, they wound around her. Small motes of light danced against her skin as she looked down at her arms. It was as if the star was reaching out for her, trying to tell her…..

Soft chimes filled her ears, drowning out the mournful melody she could almost hear. The chimes changed, turning into a blaring tone that grated on her ears, crudely yanking her straight out of her dreamscape and slamming her back into the waking world.

She opened her eyes, reaching out and groping for her phone. The screen glowed in the dim lights of the apartment, nothing more than a fuzzy rectangle. Her glasses must have fallen off when she had fallen asleep…somewhere. Where was she? And who was she this time?

Poking the glass screen of the phone until it shut up, she ran her hands over the surface of the hardwood table she had fallen asleep over. Her fingers bumped into her glasses and she snatched them up. The plastic was cold on the bridge of her nose. She straightened up, her spine cracking, blinking slowly as she looked around. Sleep still clutched at her, the chimes from her dream still ringing in her ears.

The studio apartment was bare, nothing but a cube with off-white walls the landlady had referred to as 'eggshell'. It sounded pretentious to her, considering that the carpet was threadbare, the stovetops permanently stained, and the wood floors downright symphonic when walked on. The price was fair though, for an apartment in….she leaned back in her chair, until she could see the city skyline and the trapezoidal Hancock building out the window. Chicago. Midtown Chicago.

She looked at the table in front of her. The computer tower there whirred, the monitor glowing as numbers streamed across the screen. Thick cables dropped from the back of the computer and crawled across the bare floor into the jack in the wall. The building was wired for wifi, but for the kind of computing power she was using the machine needed a bit of a boost. She glanced at the progress bar in the corner of the screen. Twenty hours down, three to go.

Chimes cut through her thoughts again, louder this time. They seemed to be coming from the white panel near the door…. She could have slapped herself. The intercom was ringing. Someone was trying to reach her. Her unconscious mind must have woven the sound into her dream without waking her up.

Her fingers curled around the mug in front of her as she stood, pushing back the chair she had fallen asleep in. She sipped at the coffee, grimacing. She had been out long enough for it to cool down. Lukewarm coffee was terrible, but coffee was coffee was coffee. Except burnt coffee. That was just disgusting.

She padded across the room, the floors complaining under her as she moved. Motion in the corner of her eye had her spinning around. She hadn't spent a lot of time in this apartment. It was a throwaway, which was why she hadn't bothered to furnish it. Because she had only been there a few times, she had forgotten about the mirror that had come with the apartment. It hung in the bathroom, her reflection staring at her through the open door. Blonde hair struggled out of a failing pony tail. Black-rimmed glasses guarded blue-grey eyes still fogged by sleep, and a red slash cut across one cheek where she had been resting against the table.

The doorbell chimed again. She turned away from her reflection, yawning. People in her profession were not the prettiest or the most put together.

Wandering over, she pressed the intercom button. "Yeah?"

"Miss Kathleen Higgs?" A deep voice asked. Right, that was the name on this lease.

"Yep, that's me."

"Your landlady called us. We're supposed to replace some faulty wiring. Something about flickering lights?"

Right on cue, the light in the kitchen began to shudder and blink. Convenient. She sipped her coffee. "Who are you?"

"Hendricks and Hendricks Lights, miss. We also do wiring."

"Right," she snorted. "And I'm the Queen of England."

"Miss? Can we come up?"

No point in leaving them outside, they'd just bust down the door. She looked over her shoulder. The computer was connected to a special land line that gave her access to the supercomputer she needed to do the calculations. It couldn't be unplugged, or the whole system would crash. There was no way to move it.

She would just have to find a way to make her visitors go away without a fuss. And while she was at it, she could solve world hunger. Sure, no problem.

"Sure. Come on in." She pressed the button to open the downstairs doors, flipped the lock on the door, and slouched back to the table. She collapsed onto the only chair, glancing down at her outfit. Aside from the fact that her ponytail had completely given up, she was wearing old sweatpants rolled over at the waist and a tank top. Not exactly company attire. She shrugged.

A glance at the screen had her pausing, a frown tugging her brows together as she leaned towards the computer.

Knocks rolling through the apartment didn't jar her concentration.

"Door's open," she called, her voice absent. The latch clicked, and the floor announced two pairs of booted feet entering the studio.

"Kathleen Higgs?"

"Kate."

"What?"

"Call me Kate," she said without looking away from the monitor. "Since we both know the name on the lease is a fake one." She tipped her head to the side, as if that would make the puzzle on the screen clearer. "I'm missing two hours," she muttered, dropping into her vacated chair.

"What?" a younger voice that she hadn't heard over the intercom asked.

"I'm missing two hours. The countdown said three hours a minute ago, and now it says one. It shouldn't do that." Kate glanced over at the two men standing just inside the door to the studio apartment. One was older and more compact, the other younger with brown hair that spiked upward in defiance of gravity. Both were dressed in grey coveralls with some sparky logo on the left lapel. They were also both holding black utility bags. She would bet one of her many identities that what was in those bags had nothing to do with wiring. Both were fit and looked battle-hardened. The cold look in the older one's eyes made her shiver. He had killer's eyes.

She flapped a hand at them. "Can you do me a favor? Can you come back and try to kill me when I'm not busy. Oh, and bring coffee while you're at it. Cream, no sugar. Thanks."

"Are you dismissing us?" Spiky Hair asked, his British voice outraged.

"Why would two hours be gone?" Kate mused just as the progress bar scrolled across the screen, eliminating another thirty minutes. "My access should be good for another forty eight hours, so it can't be that."

"Miss? Kate?"

"The algorithm is supposed to be correlating the spins and spectra between the twinned galaxies at a certain rate. Due to the massive amount of data and the complex equations factoring the many variables that control angular speed and velocity, it was supposed to crunch one segment of Cygnus A and one of Whirlpool, compare them, then move on to the next segment. The only reason it would speed up would be if it...found….a….. ….pattern." She blinked. The two fake electricians jumped as she leapt up, almost upsetting her coffee cup before she snatched it back. "HA! I knew there was a pattern. Those morons at NASA can suck it!"

"Miss? Uh, the light?"

"I'm busy," Kate said just as the words _Calculation Complete_ flashed on the screen. "Just call your buddy out back."

"Which one would that be?" one of them asked in a condescending tone.

"The one jacked into the system and messing with the kitchen light," Kate responded, taking another sip of her coffee. Her free fingers moved over the keyboard, and the printer hooked up to the computer hummed. Pages of numbers and equations scrolled out.

Below the sound of the printer was utter silence.

"How do you know that?" the younger on growled.

"I guessed. But thanks for the conformation!"

They drew back as she returned her attention to the screen. Kate's gaze slid sideways, tracking their movements as they came together to whisper.

"Just who is this chick?" Spiky Hair asked, thinking her completely absorbed in her work. Kate opened the system dialog on the computer.

"File says she's Kathleen Higgs, a stock market analyst for some big name corporation," the older one said. Finding the satellite connection, Kate switched the link from the Titan supercomputer she was using to crunch her data to the secure offsite server she kept all her results in. She entered the command to package the data for transmission. So much data had to be compressed before it could be sent. Another countdown popped up on the screen. Kate gritted her teeth. If the data wasn't compressed correctly, she could lose everything. It had taken her months of telescope work to gather all the data she needed. She didn't have time to do it all over again, especially not if they had found her. According to the computer, it was going to need ten minutes to compile everything. She could keep them occupied for that long, right?

"What kind of stock market analyst studies galaxies on her weekends?" Spiky Hair whisper-demanded. "And a 'stock market analyst'? She looks like a hungover cheerleader."

"I'd go clinically insane of boredom if I was a cheerleader," Kate announced loudly as she minimized the countdown window. She turned to lean her side against the back of the chair, resting her chin on her crossed arms as she lounged. "So, how can I help you gentlemen today?" The older 'electrician' opened his mouth. "Oh, and please stop insulting my intelligence by pretending you're here to fix a light that clearly wasn't broken until you showed up."

"Very well, Miss Kathleen…"

"Kate."

"Would that be Kate Henderson, or Kate Hasselbach? Or maybe Katherine Michaelis? Perhaps Katie Menten?"

She batted her eyelashes. "I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Don't play coy with me," he snapped.

"I wasn't playing coy, I was…." Kate paused, blinking. "Rotational dynamics."

"What?" The older 'electrician' leaned back, startled.

"I was just thinking that there would need to be some correlation of the rotational dynamics of the galaxies, which would be evident in the spin…. Where did that page go?" Kate began to rustle through the pages spewing out of the printer. She pulled the one she wanted out, her gaze darting across the page. Yanking a pen from her pocket and thumbing the cap off, she began to underline some of the numbers.

Two minutes and half a page later, someone cleared their throat. She glanced up. "Are you two imposters still here?"

"It's rude to ignore guests," Spike Hair informed her in his lofty British accent.

"Well, Jeeves, it's rude to try and kill people."

She heard footsteps as he moved around to peer at the screen. "What was that earlier? It looked like some Matrix stuff."

"I was calculating the relative velocities, angular momentums, chemical compositions, and electromagnetic spectra of two galaxies half a universe apart. Despite the distance, they have almost identical irregular structures. If they had been elliptical or spiral shaped galaxies, this wouldn't have been a surprise. But they're strangely shaped. See these three arms here? Almost the exact same. Not only that, but their infrared, ultraviolet, and gamma radiation spectra line up almost exactly. Of course, the gamma radiation is the most interesting, because that's what I'm going to use to prove that the supermassive black holes in the centers of the galaxies are linked through spacetime, creating an Einstein-Rosen bridge."

She got a blank look. "What?"

"A wormhole. I'm trying to prove the existence of a wormhole. The problem is, both the Einstein-Rosen calculations and Schwarzschild's eternal black hole theories are inherently unstable and collapse almost as soon as they're formed which, of course, would happen at the speed of light. A negative matter solution works, but no one's ever been able to find physical evidence of negative matter, so I have to find a positive matter solution. All of this hinges on the theoretical existence of a white hole, the antithesis of a black hole that is thought to spew matter and energy. But where does this matter and energy come from? I posit that a black hole and a white hole can be linked, creating an Einstein-Rosen bridge. The data I have shows a significant correlation between the matter composition and radiation emitted by the holes. They're _exactly_ the same, which has never been observed before. The chance of it happening randomly is impossibly small. Of course, I don't have any way to account for relativistic time dilation, which may be messing with my calculations."

He blinked at her. "There is no way you are a stock-market analyst."

"Maybe it's a hobby." Kate glanced at the countdown. Three and a half minutes to go.

She realized that she had lost sight of her other visitor. Kate was turning her head to look when she heard the soft whirr of machinery activating, and the hairs on the back of her neck rose as the air behind her charged with electricity.

Time was up.

Kate turned slowly. The older one had a black rod in his hand and was pointing it right at her.

"So, Paladin, I never did ask," she said quietly. "How did you manage to find me?"

* * *

_If Big Bang Theory, Fringe, and Cosmos had a threesome and procreated, it would probably look something like this story. If you don't know what any of those things are, this is not the story you are looking for. _

_All I have to say is sit down and buckle up, because it's going to be a wild ride. _


	2. The Wisdom of Adama

_"Keep jumping."_

_-Commander William Adama, __Battlestar Galactica_

* * *

"You were very careful," the Paladin informed her. He must have been feeling chatty. Not many of the grey-clad killers were willing to answer her questions. They had a more 'kill on sight' philosophy. "It took us a long time. But you slipped up in London. We found you in the terminal when you hadn't gone through security. Once we had a name, everything else fell like a house of cards."

"I knew London was going to be a problem," Kate muttered and grimaced. "But that still doesn't explain why you were look-" Lightning shot across the space between them. Kate jerked back reflexively, the projectile missing her by no more than a hair. The snaking cable that trailed behind the makeshift bullet brushed against her side.

Breath froze in her lungs as electricity bounded through her like a living thing. Every muscle in her torso locked tight and her heart stuttered against the surging current.

The contact broke and she stumbled back, gasping for air. A high, pained whine came from behind her. Kate tossed a glance over her shoulder as she backed away from the table.

The lightning cable was wrapped around Spiky Hair, whose hair was even sharper as the massive voltage ran through his body. The edges of the cable seemed to flicker where it made contact with him. Kate's eyes narrowed as his knees gave out and he collapsed.

The other Paladin moved into her line of sight. He snapped his wrist and the cabled flexed, peeling away from his partner and snapping back into place. Spiky Hair struggled back to his feet and the two moved together, coming between her and the computer. Kate gritted her teeth. She wasn't leaving without those notes.

"Get your weapon," the older Paladin snapped to his shaking partner. A rookie, then. Of the pair, he would be the weaker one. Kate curled her right hand into a fist. She wasn't combat trained, wasn't sure how to win a fight, but she knew how to throw a basic punch.

Both of them were professional killers. She had one chance, one hit. She had to make it count.

Her fist flashed out. Twisting to put the entire weight of her body behind the punch, Kate jumped.

When she was little, Kate had always enjoyed the little paper twisted firecrackers, the kind that snapped and popped when thrown on the ground. She had run around with her father, throwing them at each other's feet. It reminded her of what it was like to jump; a sharp pop, a flash of light that wasn't quite light, and a zing through her body like a start from a loud noise. No one else seemed to see the light, just as they couldn't see the mist that always seemed to hang in the air for a minute, marking the place a jumper had sliced through the fabric of spacetime.

Her view of the room changed in an instant as she appeared out the air next to the young Paladin. Hazel eyes widened just as her fist made contact with his stomach. The impact shot up her arm as he stumbled back, knocking into his partner as he doubled over.

Kate lunged over him, making a wild grab for her notes. Papers cascaded to the floor.

The older Paladin shoved Spiky Hair over, swinging the lightning rod in an overhanded strike. Kate jumped, appearing on the other side of the computer. She ducked, reflexively bracing herself against the metal table.

The rod slammed into the monitor, shattering the flat screen. Ten thousand volts raced over the surface of the table and shot up her arms. Kate screamed as she was thrown back. She hit the floor hard, the breath slamming out of her lungs. Her body flickered as the electric shock hijacked her ability.

The stun didn't last more than an instant, since most of the lightning rod's charge had been used up in the first strike. Air rushed back into her lungs and she rolled to her feet. The two Paladins closed on her from around the table. Fury burned in Spiky Hair's eyes. They were on guard now; she wouldn't get in another hit. Kate backed up slowly, drawing them away from the computer. She counted in her head as they paced away.

Five… four…three…. Her foot hit the back wall. No where else to go. She jumped, appearing behind the Paladins.

Spiky Hair whirled and fired, the cable going over her head as she dropped to the ground. Kate swept the papers into her arms, glanced regretfully at the computer, and jumped.

Sand blasted her body, driving through her thin clothes. Hot winds whipped around her and tugged at the papers she clutched. Kate snapped her eyes shut, struggled forward a single step forward, and jumped again.

Tiny grains drifted down around her in a shower of red pixy dust. Kate sighed in relief as the cool air of her French apartment closed around her, dispelling the last traces of desert.

She glanced around. This apartment was actually furnished, in soothing pale tones. The late afternoon light was coming in through the gaps in the shutters, the air fresh with the smell of the countryside and ozone….

Something punched into her back with enough force to send her stumbling forward. She gasped, just before contained lightning painted her vision white.

Kate crashed down, frozen. Her nose smashed into the carpet. Papers flew everywhere.

Her body fought itself, convulsions ripping through muscles that were locked tight with electricity. The roaring in her ears was as loud as a towering waterfall. Still, voices filtered through.

"Did you have to use the elephant gun?" someone demanded.

"She is a confirmed jumper," a rich and lethal voice said, his accent lending a lyrical cadence to his words. "The fact that she is here meant that she escaped the team in Chicago."

"She's going to be incoherent now. I thought you wanted to question her about the other one?"

The last two words caught in Kate's dazed mind. Other one. They were looking for another jumper. Kate had very, very few friends, and she'd fry from the current before she's tell the Paladins anything about them.

Although, at the moment, she wasn't in any shape to tell anyone anything. The current had locked her jaws together.

Suddenly the electricity stopped. She went limp, though random muscle kept twitching sporadically. Sparks swept along her nerves as her body tried to jump, an instinctive escape from the pain she knew was coming.

"How about it, jumper? You know who we are searching for, do you not?"

The taste of copper flooded her mouth and her tongue ached; she must have bitten it at some point in time. Kate cracked her eyes open to find a white haired, dark skinned Paladin crouched over her. Unlike the two in Chicago, he wasn't pretending to be anything other than what he was. The grey duster fit his frame loosely, leaving ample room for movement. He had three lightning rods attached to the utility belt at his waist, but it was the wickedly long hunting knife that had her attention. The thing was almost long enough to be considered a short sword, and the edge shone a pale silver from continual sharpening.

"Well, Kate?"

She spat the blood in her mouth at him. Ruby red splattered across the grey. "I'll take 'Go to Hell' for five hundred."

The backhanded blow snapped her head to the side.

"Jumpers never know when to quit," he growled to the blond Paladin. Kate twisted her head to look at the woman, just in time to catch a strange emotion flicker through her grey eyes. For an instant, it had almost looked like concern.

"Listen, young idiot," the Paladin began. He seemed to be addressing her again.

Kate smirked. "Bet my IQ is higher than yours," she said smugly.

A booted foot caught her in the stomach, driving her internal organs back against her spine. Kate curled up into a fetal position reflexively, a groan ripped out of her.

The Paladin turned from her to talk to his partner as her mind caught on one very important fact: she could move. They hadn't grounded the cables.

By some strange quirk of physics, jumpers had to take whatever was in direct contact with them when they jumped. Clothes, cars, cables, it all came with as long as it was connected to something that was connected to them. Paladins used this to their advantage by grounding the electric cables, using prongs to slam them into the ground and anchor their prey to the earth or the building. Jump strength varied by individual, but no one was strong enough to jump an entire building.

For whatever reason, this Paladin had neglected to ground the cables that were wrapped around her.

It took a moment for Kate to gather her strength and her concentration. Residual shocks were still rippling through her body, disrupting her focus.

The Paladin turned back to her, death in his eyes, and Kate suddenly found motivation she didn't know she had. Summoning all her strength, she jumped.

Energy popped and she appeared in the middle of a wheat field, stalks swaying in the breeze. Kate took a deep breath and jumped again. Paladins knew about the jumpscars, miniscule tears in the fabric of reality that jumpers left behind when they punched through. They also knew how to take full advantage of them.

The Rockies rose around her. Kate climbed to her feet, wiggling and twisting her arms. The cables clung for a moment, the slowly peeled away and dropped to the rocky ground. She sagged against the side of the cliff, breathing hard.

Her hand were so cold. Kate held them out in front of her, numbly noticing the way her fingers trembled. The shivers ran up her arms, until her entire body was shaking uncontrollably. She clamped her arms around her stomach, abruptly sliding down the cliff face. She sat hard, ignoring the flash of pain.

She was so cold. The air was perfectly warm, but she was cold. Her muscles trembled and shook. Breath came in small pants as she struggled to draw enough air into her lungs. Fear coursed through her faster than her racing blood, and her heart beat frantically against her rib cage.

_Stress reaction_, her brain said. Nothing more than a stress reaction to a near-death situation. She had been hunted before, all jumpers had. It was a fact of life. She could deal. She had to deal. It was just an emotional reaction. She was more rational than that.

She breathed down to the bottom of her lungs, trying to slow her heart rate.

The shaking wouldn't stop.

She heard a strange pop, an almost-sound that had her head snapping up and her pulse skyrocketing.

Her jumpscar still hung in the air like an ethereal mist. A black canister fell from it, hitting the rock with a hollow _clink_.

Kate jumped as the bomb detonated, fire filling the space she had just occupied. The energy of the blast caught her up, throwing her from her jump. Kate slammed in a wall and dropped to the floor, wheezing. Around her other people yelled, and she heard a cacophony of thuds as the shock wave took them down too.

Adrenaline burning in her veins, she shot to her feet. Her head whipped back and forth, surveying the scene. Her mind took in everything as a series of snapshots: walls papered with pictures cut from travel magazines, portable whiteboards covered with equations, a massive poster of a swirling galaxy and another of _Galactica_. It was the living room of another of her apartments. She had many, all over the world, but this was the one she actually called home.

It was the only one under her real name. Her sanctuary, it was the place she felt at peace, the place she jumped to when her mind was blank with panic.

It was also infested with Paladins picking themselves up off the carpet, shell-shocked looks on their faces.

One of them caught sight of her. He pointed, opening his mouth. Blind panic seized her, and Kate jumped.

Scenes flickered by like a broken movie reel, too fast to actually follow as she jumped all over the world. Day, night, water, searing heat, bone-eating cold, she passed through them all.

Suddenly, it stopped. Condition air gusted against her skin as she blinked against the dim light. A soft yellow lamp lent some light to the room, but the main source was the three massive computer screens lined up on a desk. A head of fuzzy hair sat in front of it. Light reflected off of thick glasses as the person turned around.

"Kate?"

"Hi, Merlin," Kate gasped, her heartbeat thundering in her ears. Sparkling dots were eating up the edges of her vision. "Friends… looking for…you…"

He snorted. "They're always looking for…. Kate!" The room spun once, and darkness claimed her.


	3. Mission Improbable

"IT… LIVES!" The dramatic pronouncement was followed by a mad cackle as Kate slouched into the room.

"Shut it, Merlin," she moaned, dropping down into a chair and bending over until she could rest her forehead on her knees. Slowly, ever so slowly, the room stopped spinning.

"How are you feeling?" Merlin asked.

"Like crap warmed over," Kate groaned.

"Not surprising." He sounded far too upbeat. "You took a lot of volts. There's a huge electrical burn on your back. The prongs missed your spine by a quarter of an inch." He paused for a moment. "You know, if they had applied that directly to your spinal column, you'd probably be dead."

His voice was dark.

Kate raised her head from her knees and looked at one of her very few friends. Merlin was standing in front of her, all six foot two gangly feet of him. The glare from the computer monitors streaked across the thick coke-bottle glasses that rested on his nose, almost hiding his evergreen eyes. But she could see the concern there.

She managed a thin smile. "I'll be alright, Merlin," she said softly.

"For a while there, I thought your heart was going to stop," he said.

"But it didn't," she said, straightening as much as she could with the way her back was aching. She spotted the tray in his hands. "Coffee?" she asked, perking up.

"Gatorade, painkillers, coffee. In that order and no other," he warned as he passed the tray over to her. Kate sighed dramatically and rolled her eyes, but complied.

Ten minutes later, she started to feel human again.

Merlin had gone back to his computers, typing in code faster than she could follow. The computer screens were the main source of light in the room, turning his carrot-colored hair a strange blue-purple.

"So, are you going to tell me how you were stupid enough to get zapped, or just let me guess?" Merlin asked suddenly.

"It was an ambush," Kate said, taking a long draw of the coffee. "Wait a minute, how did you know I had an electrical burn on my back?"

She had seen it herself, awkwardly twisting around to see the source of the burning pain in her back. The red marks radiated out from a pair of punctures in the middle of her back. The wounds themselves had been dark with dried blood.

Along with the open wounds, she had managed to accumulate an impressive collection of bruises. The right side of her face was purple and blue, from her many impacts with the floor and the back of the Paladin's hand, and she had an oblong black and red patch on her stomach. Since she hadn't woken up to blinding pain, Kate assumed there wasn't any internal bleeding.

"The back of your tank was bloodstained, so I took a look."

Belatedly, Kate realized she was wearing one of his shirts.

She sighed. "Merlin…."

"Your other one was ripped and burned. Besides, how many times have I seen you in a bikini? It's the same thing."

"Three times, because those were the only times I could talk you out of your technohaven man-cave," Kate shot back.

Merlin turned so he could stare at her with his forest-colored eyes as she drank her coffee. The room wasn't quiet, the towers of computers whirring and buzzing with activity, but it was peaceful.

"And now for the most important question. How did they find you?"

"Airport terminal in London."

"I've warned you about London. It has the second highest number of security cameras per block."

"I know, I know," Kate groaned.

"And a plane, Kate? Truly?"

"I was there for a conference! Countries get really itchy when they can't figure out how you got in and out of their borders. I have enough problems with the Paladins, I don't need MI-6 breathing down my neck as well. And don't you dare tell me they don't exist!" she snapped as Merlin opened his mouth.

He leaned back in his chair with a grin. Kate stuck he tongue out at him.

Kate drank half her cup before she spoke again. "They were in my Los Angeles apartment," she said quietly. "Actually, they were in several of my apartments at once. It was a coordinated attack, to make sure that I had nowhere to run to. The others I don't care about, but they were in my Los Angeles apartment."

"That's the one in your real name, isn't it?" Merlin asked. Kate nodded. "Then that means…."

"They know I'm a graduate student at Cal Tech," Kate finished with a growl. The stunned numbness from the sudden attack was wearing of, anger blooming in its place with startling rapidity. "I was so damn close!" she almost yelled, her temper snapping. "Six months and one more paper, and I could have graduated! Gotten my Ph.D. That's all I really wanted. Three and a half careful years of work, all for nothing!"

"If it's that big of a deal, I'll just make you the credentials," Merlin said with a shrug.

"It's not about the title," Kate snapped. It was a familiar argument. "It's about the work. It's about contributing to the advancement of human knowledge, not the letters behind the name."

"There are easier ways to get by, you know. Doctors make terrible salaries anyway."

"Well, we can't all be paid ridiculous amounts to hack into supposedly secure databases. How did the last one go, by the way?"

Merlin smirked. "Their security was better this time, but it wasn't up to withstanding Caliburn for too long." He reached over, petting the closest computer tower like a favorite dog.

The sight of the computer triggered something in her mind. Kate straightened quickly. "I need to check something."

Merlin immediately called up the monitor, stepping aside to give her access. Kate dropped into his chair and opened up a web browser.

"What are you doing?" Merlin asked, leaning over her shoulder.

"Remember that galaxy comparison I was talking about a couple of days ago?" she asked, entering her password to access the Cal Tech astrophysics database.

"Yeah."

"Well, I found it," she grinned widely. "I found a wormhole, just as those Paladins interrupted me. I was sending the data to the offsite server when they attacked…."

Merlin shook his head. "They traced you through the connection, didn't they? I told you that you should have just used Caliburn. Would have gone faster, too. It's…"

"..basically a supercomputer." Kate said with him. "I know, I know. But you were using it for your last job at the time, and I didn't want to….._NO!_"

Merlin jumped as she slammed her fist into the table. "Careful! Delicate machinery!"

"_It isn't there!_" she snarled.

"Ok, calm down. What isn't there, Kate?"

"My data! I thought they might have unplugged the computer before the upload finished, but even the raw data is gone. Look, there's _nothing!_" she yelled, pointing at the blank screen.

Merlin gently shoved her out of the way so he could get a better look. "You're right, there is nothing." She almost brained him with her mug.

"It took me six months to gather that data," Kate moaned, her head hitting the desk with a _thunk_. "Ow."

"It can't be that bad."

"Six _fracking_ months of sitting in a cold, dark room in Chile with a massive telescope. Six months of all-nighters, of broken machines and rainstorms and catastrophies. It took me two years to find the right galaxies to look at, another six months to convince my advisor to get me telescope time, because people with more _realistic _projects needed it. I spent three years putting up with that sonovagun to get this result. I had it, too! I was literally holding it in my hands, and now it's gone!" she cried. She had been forced to leave the print outs scattered across the floor of her French apartment. "My life's work, gone like that," she said with a snap of her fingers.

Merlin was quiet as she stewed in her caustic mix of misery and rage. Kate glanced up just in time to see a calculating and slightly evil look enter his eyes

"What if I told you I knew how you could get it back?" he asked.

Kate stared at him, the hairs on the back of her neck rising. "Get it back?"

He shooed her out of his chair and settled down. His fingers flew over the keyboard, pulling up and discarding dialog boxes faster than she could follow.

"You know Paladins, they aren't going to get rid of anything that might give them a lead on us. They probably have all your data on one of their closed servers somewhere, or they will soon. You said this was in Chicago?"

"Yeah," Kate said warily.

"Then they'll probably take it to their Manhattan base."

"Wait just one red hot moment. How do you know they have a base in Manhattan?" Kate demanded.

Merlin paused and looked at her, blinking. "I didn't tell you?"

"Tell me what?"

"I jumped to a tech conference in Germany and a few hours later a pair of Paladins showed up."

"We have got to figure out how they're tracking us like that," Kate muttered.

"Anyway," Merlin continued, glaring at her for the interruption. "They didn't know who they were looking for, and I managed to lift this from one of them." He reached over and picked up a smartphone, tossing it to her. "It was filled with all sorts of secrets, including recent phone numbers. I traced one of them to Manhattan. Right down to the building." He paused, as if waiting for an appreciation of his genius.

"Feeling a little kleptomaniacal, are we?" Kate asked with a grin.

"Shut it, Miss Mood Swings. Weren't you depressed thirty seconds ago?" Merlin shot back.

"Yeah, but then you lit a light at the end of the tunnel," Kate said. "Then again, I'm still not sure where you're going with this."

"It's not where I'm going, it's where you're going," Merlin said, his fingers continuing their sprint over the keyboard. "The Paladin's have a closed circuit system, I'm sure of it. But it still has to be dynamic, in order for them to connect with the other systems."

"I don't speak computer, O Great and Powerful Technowizard."

"Their system should be like a clam. When it senses a need, it will open its shell, or in this case it's firewalls. If we can force a satellite link, I can hack into their systems and get your data back."

"Sweet! But how are you going to do that without a way in their computers?" Kate asked.

"That's where you come in. I've been tinkering with this little darling for a while now. It's a seeking virus. Once inserted into the code, it won't stop until it finds and activates a satellite link with my computer. Well, it stops short of the firewalls and I take it from there. But it will force the Paladin's system to open up. All it needs is to be downloaded."

He snapped the enter key, reached under the desk, and removed a flashdrive. He held it out to her.

Kate made the short cognitive leap. More like a step, really. "Oh no," she said, jumping to her feet, then wincing as her bruised ribs complained. "No, Merlin. Hell no."

"It won't be that hard, Kate. All you need to do is plug it into a computer. It doesn't even matter which one."

"Do you see the word 'Bond' after my name? I am not a freaking spy! I am not combat trained!"

"Kate Houston-Bond. It does have a nice ring to it," he said with a grin. Merlin dropped the smile, his tone becoming serious again. "You're a jumper, Kate. You can pop in and pop right back out again."

"First of all, I can't 'pop in' if I don't know where to pop to," Kate said angrily. "You know that; you're a jumper too. So unless you have a picture of the inside of the compound, I'm not going to be popping anywhere. Second, they're going to shoot me on sight. Last time I checked, being a jumper didn't protect me from a bullet to the back of the head!"

"They won't shoot you on sight if you're blending in." Merlin got up and crossed the room. Picking up what she had assumed to be a grey blanket from the back of the couch, he held it out to her. It was a pearly Paladin robe.

Kate looked from the robe to him and back. "How did you even get that? You rarely Avalon," she said, naming the computer haven that he had created for himself.

Merlin shook his head, that hard evil look in his eyes again. "You don't want to know. What do you think?" He tossed the robe to her.

"I think you're trying to get me killed," she said bluntly as she crossed her arms, letting the fabric drift gracefully to the floor.

"I would never do that," Merlin said briskly. "You're the only person who talks to me on a regular basis. Besides, you can always jump out if it gets too hot."

He held out the flash drive, dangling it in front of her. "Your life's work, Kate. Your words, not mine."

She glared at him, growling under her breath as she snatched the slim stick from him. "I hate you."

"You're welcome. Come on, I have a few more toys for you."


	4. I Can Haz Magnets?

"Have I mentioned recently that I despise you?" Kate muttered under her breath, knowing that the earpiece Merlin had given her would pick up the tiny vibrations.

"Let me think….. not recently."

"Well, I do. You might have mentioned, at least in passing, that the Paladin complex was _in the basement of the New York Times Building!_" She loved New York. A hundred people on the street around her, and not a single one glanced at her as she shouted the last part of that sentence into the air. It was paradise for anyone who just wanted to get lost in the crowd.

If only there weren't so many cameras.

Kate sighed and shifted the weight of the bag on her shoulder. She leaned against the wall of a building a block down from the _Times_ Building, absently flexing her hands in the black leather gloves that covered them. Her right she clenched into a fist, and the left…

She rubbed her fingers together, feeling the raised ridges of the wires that ran through the glove. Clenching her fist would connect the wired in her fingers to the mesh on the palm, completing a circuit that activated the magnets that wrapped around her wrist and generating an electromagnetic field that would short circuit any electronics within fifteen feet of her.

It wouldn't work on the long distance security cameras, but that was why she had an Irish technowizard currently grumbling in Gaelic in her ear.

"…..leis an dúr lochtach…terrible firewalls…poll cód mharcaíochta nach bhféadfaí a shealbhú cac…if I were in charge of their security, bheadh an roinn ar fad a bheith ar a n-asal…finally!"

"Got it?" Kate asked.

"Yes. Give me one moment…I have the external cameras." Kate peeled away from the wall and began walking as Merlin continued to talk. "As soon as you come within range, I'll cut them. Can't feed them into a loop. There's too many people coming and going, they'd notice right away."

"Merlin, when have I ever given you the impression that I care about your mumbo jumbo?"

"You haven't, but I know you do. I just mentioned it because you're only going to have a small window of time before they reset the system and I have to hack back in again, those amadán…"

"Merlin, are you absolutely sure about this?" Kate asked in a low voice, coming to a stop just short of the camera range.

"If I wasn't before, and I was, I am now. There's a second layer of code beneath the official systems. It's from within the building, and it feeds in on itself. I know how they code, and this has 'Paladin' written all over it. Believe me, they're hiding in there."

"Alright. I'm trusting you." Kate took a deep breath. "Shut it down."

"They're blind. Go."

Kate strode across the street and through the revolving doors. The vaulted lobby bustled with people moving about with purpose. Kate joined them, blending in with the pantsuit she wore. She cut through the crowds, angling for a back hallway Merlin had said would lead to the elevator she needed.

"There. That one," he said in her ear. Kate stopped in front of a wood paneled door, innocuous enough in its simple elegance. The handle had a slot for a keycard.

Kate reached into her purse and pulled a black box the size of a deck of cards out. A furrow down the middle cut it almost in half lengthwise. With it came a blank white card with a magnetic strip on the back.

She slid the blank card into the slot and pulled it out again, then swiped it down the middle of the device in her hand. She could feel the vibrations of the machine humming against her skin as she counted in her head. Merlin had said it would take his invention twenty seconds to read the magnetic pattern on the lock and reconfigure the internal magnets to mimic it. The card contained a special strip of ferrous material that could be easily patterned and wiped.

Merlin called it his universal key, able to copy any keycard in existence.

Kate had felt obliged to remind him that it didn't actually work on real keys, and was therefore not universal. He hadn't talked to her for a week after that.

Merlin was touchy about his inventions. Kate couldn't complain about the things themselves: the man could bend the laws of physics give three hours, two sticks of bubble gum, duct tape, and a household microwave.

Her count reached zero, and the machine stopped humming. Kate swiped the card through the device again, then slid it into the key slot. The lights across the top flashed green, and she heard the distinct click of a lock opening.

"You did it again, you smarmy blighter," she murmured as she stepped through and shut the door behind her. The keymaker went back into her oversized purse.

"No thanks necessary."

The hallway in front of her lead straight ahead maybe fifty feet to a single elevator door with another keycard slot next to it. Kate went straight up to it and swiped the card she had just made. The lights flashed red. Drawing a black circle on the top of that one with a marker, she pulled out another blank card.

"Kate, they just reset the security system," said Merlin urgently. "Sixty seconds to reboot and counting."

"Come on," she growled at the device in her hand. "Merlin, am I going to have communication down below?"

"You should. It's a special attenuated signal satellite comm that I made myself. See, it loops the signal back on itself to increase…"

"As much as I love to talk science, now is not the time." Kate swiped the new key and the lights flashed green. The door slid open to reveal a mirrored box.

Kate glared at it and balked. "Merlin, what if there's biometrics?"

"Use the hacker. You have ten seconds to make up your mind." His tone was urgent.

The door began to slide closed. Kate squeaked and lunged into the elevator. The door shut with a dull sound, and there was a soft ding.

"_Please place eye in scanner,_" a pleasant mechanical voice intoned. Kate pulled yet another device out of her bag, placing the concave end over the scanner.

"It's in place," Kate said, pressing the black button on top.

"Good. The device will flip through a random assortment of iris prints until it hit on something that triggers the machine," Merlin said in her ear.

"Retinal tracings are as unique as fingerprints. How's it going to find the right one?"

"It's cycling through different databases, starting with the NY Times staff. Some of them have to be on there to explain their presence here…."

Something dinged, and the scanner flashed green. The steel box trembled and began to slide downward.

"I'm in," Kate said, tucking the thing away. She could feel the elevator gaining speed as it descended, and she had the strange impression she was going down into Hell itself. Shivers crept over her entire body, sweeping over her from toes to the crown of her head.

Static crackled in her ear. "Merlin?"

"Still here, love." When he was stressed, she could hear traces of his roots in his accent. When he had decided to lose it, she had never figured out.

"Good." Shivers wouldn't stop racing over her skin, and a dull throbbing had started between her eyes. Kate shook it off. She was running on caffeine and adrenaline at the moment; there hadn't been time to stop for anything more than a snack since she had woken up. Nerves were to be expected.

The elevator slowed suddenly, sending her heart up into her throat.

It wouldn't be that hard. Get in, find a terminal, insert the flash drive, jump out. Terminal, drive, jump. Terminal, drive, jump. Terminal, drive, jump. Easy peasy.

The elevator doors opened with a ding, and Kate almost jumped out of her skin. Behind her temple, a small knot of pain began to pulse.

"I am not ready for this," she hissed into the microphone. A single hallway lead away from the elevator towards a pair of doors. Classic male/female stick figures hung from the wall, indicating which door was which. Kate pushed open the girls door to find a locker room, complete with toilets, showers, changing stalls, and closets locked by fingerprint scanners.

At the moment, the room was deserted. Kate took full advantage, changing rapidly into the grey robe over her black pants and running shoes disguised as sensible heels. She took a moment to readjust the comm unit in her ear, making sure that a sweep of blonde curls hid it from sight. Her hair wasn't curly by nature, but having it cascading down and curled changed the planes of her face enough to fool the casual observer for a second or two.

A thick metal door dominated the back wall of the changing room, locked with a key card. A quick sweep revealed no cameras, so she coded a new blank card.

"Remember," Merlin said in as she waited for the device to finish processing the magnetic pattern. "Walk with a purpose. As soon as you stand around looking lost, you become a target." When hunting the hunters, it was best not to look like prey.

"I know that, thank you very much," Kate muttered.

"I'm sure," Merlin drawled. "Kate, there's a lot of interference on the mike."

"You're the one with all the high-tech doohickey knowledge. Sounds like your problem."

"It's going to be _your_ problem if the comm goes out," Merlin grumbled as she swiped the new keycard through the reader.

"Not like you can do much for me down here anyway," Kate muttered as she stepped out into yet another hallway. Unlike the others, which had been straight alleyways to a single destination, these branched off in all directions.

At a loss, Kate picked a direction and started walking. She lengthened her stride, her head tilted up, expression slightly vague as if she was thinking of something far more concerning than where she was going. She passed by another Paladin, a man scribbling on a tablet as he hurried down the hall. The hunter didn't give her a second look.

Smiling slightly, Kate pushed against the first door she came across. The slab of metal swung open and she was blasted with noise. Someone rushed by and sideswiped her, almost knocking her back through the open doorway. She steadied herself, joining the rush as she glanced around.

The room put NASA's Mission Control Center to shame. The far wall of the cavernous room was a quilted mesh of computer screens. Half of them had been linked up to show a massive map of the globe with constellations of different colored dots scattered across, accompanied by wavy lines that showed the motions of low orbit satellites. The rest were a mix. Some showed remote locations, some lines of code. A few interfaced with various agencies around the world, while still more held video conferences with different grey-clad Paladins around the globe.

One displayed some very, very familiar equations. Kate gritted her teeth.

It was a bigger operation that she would have ever thought possible. At least sixty people were rushing around the room, conferring with different computers and papers and Paladin's.

She zeroed in on an empty terminal, nudging her way through the flow until she could drop down into the seat. Her bag she shoved under the desk. A wiggle of the mouse woke the screen up.

Kate cast around, looking for a USB port. Surreptitiously running her fingers up the side of the monitor, she found a row of rectangular holes. Kate slid the flash drive out of her pocket and plugged it in.

"Docked," she murmured subvocally. The screen flashed twice, the password protect disengaging as the virus raced through the system.

"Got it. The probe should make contact with me soon. Your job is done though. Get out of there."

That was a good idea. The headache she had developed on the elevator ride down hadn't gone away. If anything, it had spread.

Kate stood, snagging her bag and snatching the flash drive from the computer. She shoved it in her pocket and hurried out of the room.

She had just reached the hallway when she heard a dark voice straight of her nightmares. The Paladin that had threatened her in France was right around the corner and approaching fast. Adrenaline spiked her blood as the wound on her back throbbed. Panic gripped her, her mind racing.

Couldn't jump, too many witnesses. If they knew a jumper was here, they might sweep the systems and find Merlin's virus. Whirling, she almost ran down the hall. Kate took a hard turn, then another and another, until the only thing she could hear was her own harsh breathing.

"Kate!" Merlin's voice pushed through the haze.

She braced her arms against the wall and let her head hang down, forcing herself to take a deep breath.

"Sorry, panicked."

"The virus is in. Just jump out."

"I wanted to make sure they wouldn't go looking for it," Kate said, raising her head and looking around. A camera was anchored to the corner overhead, its sweep just making its way around to her. Kate resisted the urge to twiddle her fingers at it, and jumped.

Shards of glass drove into her brain from all angles, forcing her down to her knees with a cry as she clutched at her skull. Electricity raced along her nerves as her form _shuddered_, her edges blurring like a smudged drawing. A massive force was trying to rip her apart, molecule by molecule.

As suddenly as it started, everything stopped. The pain in her limbs vanished and her body solidified with an almost audible thump of displaced air. The shards of glass in her mind had dulled, but her headache had returned with a vengeance. Warmth trickled down from her nose, and the taste of copper blood filled her mouth.

Kate sagged against the wall.

"Merlin," she whispered, horror lacing every syllable. "I can't jump."

Red light bathed the hallway as a shrill klaxon began to scream.

* * *

_Anxious hackers are not known for their self-censoring. Translate at your own risk. Of course, I did use Google translate and can not be held responsible for any grammatical errors. _


	5. Force Field, STAT!

_A note on language: these characters are adults. At times, they are going to swear. I'm going to try to save it for impact moments, but it will be present._

_That being said, this chapter does contain some language._

* * *

"What do you mean, you can't jump?" Merlin demanded.

"_I! CAN'T! JUMP!_" Kate screamed. She staggered back to her feet, wiping the blood from her nose. More just rushed down. The harsh scream of the alarm shoved spikes of pain into her skull.

"Make it stop!" Kate cried, clamping her fists to her ears.

The alarms near her went silent as the lights in the hall shut off. The glove on her left hand flashed with heat as the mechanical bracelet on her wrist warmed against the thin skin of her wrist. Belatedly, she remembered what she wore around her wrist.

Electromagnetic pulse device. What had Merlin called it? An EMPer?

An electromagnetic pulse shorted out any electrical devices within range. She glanced down the hall. He had told her that the range was fifteen feet, but every light was out within at least fifty.

The floor under her feet steadied somewhat. "Merlin, what's going on?"

"I'm trying to find out! In your bag, there should be something that looks like an old-fashioned radio. Pull that out and tell me what it says."

Sure enough, Kate found a hand held radio transmitter tucked into the bottom of the bag, a collapsible antenna on top. She telescoped open the black rod after glancing up and down the hallway.

"What is this?" She asked as she powered it up.

"It's an electromagnetic field detector."

Absurd. "And you handily happen to have one of these… why?"

"Later. What does it say?"

"Well, there's a whole bunch of numbers flashing across the screen…" Shouting voices approached. Kate flinched back against the wall, and the Paladins raced by the intersection down the hall. The corridor where she was remained mercifully deserted.

Kate turned her attention back to the receiver. "Most of the readings are changing rapidly…."

"Transient fields created by the electricity in the wires in the wall," Merlin said, as if she didn't hold a Bachelors degree in physics.

"I _know_ that," Kate hissed, her nerves rubbed raw. "Hang on, this one's just sitting there. Looks like it's in the millimeter wavelength. Far infrared."

"That's it. That's your jumpfield. You were hypothesizing about it."

"Hey, I proved it," Kate snapped, just as all the pieces fell together.

A jumpfield. A short range electromagnetic field created by jumpers in the instant before they jumped. Kate had detected it by accident when she was popping in and out of her lab late one night, grabbing Greek coffee on one of her all-nighters. The highly sensitive gauss meter had registered two pulses, one mere nanoseconds after the other. It hadn't been able to tell her the wavelength of the pulses, just that they existed. The problem had been turning itself over and over in Kate's brain until it slipped out of her mouth one night when she had been talking to Merlin.

"Jumpers make jumpfields to destabilize spacetime before we punch through with a second burst," she reiterated as she thought out loud, closing her eyes against her surroundings to focus. "If the Paladins rigged a generator to emit a field of the same wavelength, but with a slightly higher or lower frequency, there's a good chance any jumper would be slightly phase shifted, resulting in patches of destructive interference. In short, a patchy field. There wouldn't be enough destabilization to punch through."

"And if you tried, you could even end up partially jumped," Merlin finished grimly.

Kate flinched. "I'd hate to leave behind something important," she murmured, her mind whirling. "Can I use the EMPer to cancel them out while I jump? Emit another field to dampen theirs?"

"No. It's a one-frequency pulse in the radio wavelength range. To change it, I'd have to switch out the magnets for different ones."

"They've probably locked down the elevator by now." Kate growled in frustration. "I'm out of ideas. I don't suppose you built holodeck in the last hour, Mr. Scott?"

"Sorry, no."

"Can you hack it?"

"Can I hack a generator? I don't think you understand what hacking is…."

She cut him off. "They have to have some sort of control system, if only to filter out the wavelengths they want. Something that controls the power to the generator. All I need is a second, Merlin."

He sighed. "I can try. I couldn't before, but with the virus working towards me, I might be able to."

Someone yelled at the top of the corridor. Kate jammed the gauss meter back into her bag and took off down the hall. Still dazed and covered in blood, she was immediately suspect.

She took a random turn, steering away from the voices. "This place is like a labyrinth," she panted as she came to a stop at one corner. "I swear, if I see David Bowe in here, I'm going to kick him right in his hotpants."

"Jokes, yes. Jokes are good," Merlin said. He was typing so fast, she could hear the click of keys over the comm link.

Kate rounded a corner and slammed straight into a warm wall. She stumbled back, looking up into the Paladin's face. He opened his mouth to speak.

"There's a commotion over there," Kate said breathlessly, pointing down the way she came. "Got elbowed in the nose."

She held her breath as the Paladin took off down the hall, only letting it out when he vanished around the corner.

"Oh God, Merlin, I'm going to die down here," she gasped.

"Don't say that," Merlin growled. "I'm going to get you out of there. I swear, ar mo shaol agus ar mo ghrá don tsaol."

"Well, it doesn't look so good for me right…. What the actual hell?"

She had come around a corner, and the walls had turned to glass. Kate skidded to a halt, pivoted right since she was too afraid to look left, and stared. The room beyond the glass was hospital white. Long black countertops cut down the middle of the room, the tops alternately bare or covered in strange machinery.

Kate stared into the lab. And it was certainly a lab. Immediately, she recognized the pipettes, tubes, the centrifuge in the corner, and the various other paraphernalia associated with high-level biological research. But what had her attention were the fume hoods that lines the back walls, just close enough to see into the from the hallway. These were completely sealed, with gloves that protruded into the work space from the outside and an independent airflow that lead straight to an incinerator. The triple crescent moon warning of biohazards was stuck to the upper corners of all five of the hoods.

She turned slowly and studied the room behind her. While the first had been intimidating, this one froze the blood in her veins. Double glass doors prevented access from the hallway. Between the sheets was a tiny room with nozzles set into the wall and a chute disappearing into the wall. Bright yellow plastic garments hung in a recessed closet, complete with clear face shields and connected rubber gloves.

If the previous lab had said 'biohazard', this one screamed it. Every flat, gleaming metal surface had a neon orange symbol on it. It was decked out the same as the other room, full of what she was sure was several million dollars of lab equipment. But that was not all this room held.

Dozens and dozens of six-foot tall racks filled at least three quarters of the massive room, stretching back into a red fog. Each has rows and rows of round bottles laid on their, each a quarter filled with a small layer of pink liquid. Motorized cylinders on each side of the bottles turned them slowly, continuously coating the inside of the container with liquid. The room was illuminated with a soft red light, though in the bulbs overhead she could spot the long blue tubes of ultraviolet lights.

"KATE!" It probably wasn't the first time Merlin had said her name. "What is going on?!"

"They've got some sort of lab down here," Kate said, her voice subdued. "They've got the big guns, Merlin. Clean rooms, industrial centrifuges. This is a scientist's wet dream."

Kate was an astrophysicist by trade, but she wasn't stupid. She could guess what BSL-3 meant. "They're growing something." There had to be hundreds of bottles in that room.

This wasn't experimentation. This was mass production.

Merlin rumbled something she couldn't understand, but she could guess it wasn't pleasant.

"Hey!" Someone shouted. Startled, Kate looked up. Spiky Hair stood a few feet away, pointing at her with an accusing finger. "I know you."

Kate turned and ran.

"_Hurry!_" she gasped into the mike between breaths. Merlin's response was lost in the wind rushing past her ear as she stretched her legs to the fullest. She took the next corner blind, her feet almost flying out from under her as she took the turn at full speed.

A dead end with a familiar wide steel door blocked her way. It was the door to the locker room. She was almost there. Kate slammed into the door with a grunt as the impact knocked the breath out of her lungs. Frantically she shoved at the lever to release the lock, but it was jammed shut.

"_MERLIN!_" she hissed between clenched teeth as she glared at the barrel of the pistol in Spiky Hair's fist. Cool hazel eyes stared her down, utterly remorseless.

"What are you doing, boy?" An older Paladin demanded in a rolling, booming voice.

"She's a jumper," Spike Hair said. "We went after her yesterday."

With that, the other Paladin drew his gun, pointing it at her as well.

"_Merlin, it's now or never!_" Kate murmured.

"Roland wanted to talk to her," Spike Hair told his companion. "We weren't supposed to kill her."

Fire and ice clashed within her as adrenaline dumped into her veins while unadulterated fear swept through her. Fight and flight warred within her, locking her body tight as she stared at the two black eyes glaring unblinking back. Everything strained, like a spring coiled too tight.

_This is it._

_I am going to die. _The tension released with a physical snap.

Kate took a shuddering breath as a strange, surreal calm swept over her.

Gunned down in a back hallway on a failed infiltration mission was not how she thought she was going to end. Maybe it didn't have to be. Being ripped apart in a single instant by a partial jump sounded more preferable than anything they would offer. The destabilization of the field would result in millimeter pockets of energy: she's be ripped apart at the cellular level. Roland would make it hurt much worse interrogating her, she was sure.

Definitely better to die in a blink. Kate braced herself to jump.

The humming in her bones stopped, and she didn't need Merlin to tell her that he had turned off the field.

Spiky Hair's eyes narrowed and he pulled the trigger. The gun barked even as she jumped. Fire shot through her leg as energy popped against her skin and the world flickered. Cool quiet replaced the wailing of sirens, and the bullet thudded into the wall behind her.

Kate staggered, falling onto Merlin's sofa.

"Kate!"

"Bastard shot me," she gasped, clutching at her leg as warm blood spilled from beneath her fingers.

* * *

_Okay, show of hands. How many of you did I lose with my casual description of radiowave mechanics? Hold still while I count... I see... that's most of you. Alrighty then. _

_If you really want to know, look up Wave Propagation on Wikipeadia. Or just enjoy the story. _


	6. Pink Elephants

Merlin launched off his chair, snatched a blanket from the couch and helped her wrap it around her leg.

"Caliburn! Call Dr. Stripper, speaker!" he barked at the computer.

"Calling Dr. Stripper," the machine intoned. A mechanical ringing blared from the speakers.

"I don't think it hit anything major," Merlin said as he clamped down harder on the blanket.

"'Dr. Stripper'? Really?" Kate gasped as fire began racing up her leg.

"You have a hole through your leg, and that's what you are worried about?" Merlin demanded. "And her name is Anabelle Honey. What else should I call her?"

The phone connected. "I told you not to call this number, _Jim_." The rich femme fatal voice was so cold, Kate wouldn't have been surprised to see frost issuing from the hidden speakers. "I distinctly remember having that conversation, and if you need a reminder, I would be more than happy to reiterate-"

"_Annie!_ Kate's been shot."

Perfect silence reigned.

"What?" The single word was dark and deadly.

"Kate's been shot."

"Where?"

"In her thigh. There doesn't seem to be any arterial blood, so-"

Annie cut him off hard. "Where are you?"

"Avalon."

The phone clicked off as another person snapped into being in the center of the room.

Anabelle Honey didn't look like a woman with frost in her voice. Her skin was a rich caramel, her waving hair a thick black velvet that sucked up the light around it. In the soft gloom, her dark eyes were bottomless.

She hurried over, her cerulean scrubs almost glowing in the harsh light from the computers.

"Let me see," she demanded.

Merlin unwound the blanket binding her wound. Kate looked down and sucked in a breath. The skin had been pulled back, the muscle beneath shredded. Black threads from her pants laced the wound, almost obscured by the thick blood welling up.

"There's an exit hole," Merlin said. Annie reached around, her fingers probing the wound. Kate bit back a cry as sharp pain lanced down her leg.

"What kind of gun?" she asked, pulling the pants back from the entrance wound and bending her head closer. "I need better light."

"Handgun," Kate ground out through her gritted teeth as Merlin popped out. The overhead lights snapped on and he jumped back, showing Annie the high-powered flashlight in his hand.

"Shine it there," she directed, using her thumbs to carefully open the wound. "It must have been a high caliber gun. There's some tissue damage, but Merlin is correct. It missed the artery, and the bone."

"So…you're telling me…it's just a…flesh wound?" Kate panted. Merlin managed a wane grin at her attempted joke.

"High caliber bullets have a nasty habit of splintering….yeah, there's shrapnel in there." Annie's voice cut through the haze of pain and made her whimper.

"I'm going to have to do some work," the doctor said as she straightened. Dark eyes swept over Kate assessingly. "Jim, get her on a table and ready." She flickered out just as Merlin snapped "Wait!"

Annie jumped back, her hands braced on her hips. "What?"

"We have to get her to a hospital."

"We can't risk it," Annie said scathingly.

"No hospital," Kate moaned at the same time.

"Why not?" he demanded.

"Do you think they aren't going to be looking?" Annie demanded. "They'll check every hospital they can for someone matching her description with a single gunshot wound. As soon as she goes through the doors, there's going to be paperwork."

"So we'll take her somewhere that won't be quick on the paperwork."

"I'll have to show my license to be able to work on her, and you can bet they're going to check that. If you don't think that a big city doctor showing up in a small town with a GSW patient isn't going to ring alarm bells, you're more stupid than I though." Annie's tone would have frozen an active volcano at that moment.

"I'm not going to blow Annie's cover," Kate said, as adamantly as she could while the pain radiating up her leg was enough to make her eyes cross.

Merlin looked from one girl to the other, then snapped. "Fine!"

"Good." Annie vanished. Merlin snarled a curse in Gaelic.

"Sorry about this," he grunted as he slid an arm under her shoulders. He levered her up, and her world went white as shards of glass seemed to dig into her spine.

Merlin jumped, taking her over to a steel table. He scattered the papers stacked there with a sweep of his arm, then glanced at her, hesitation evident in his forest eyes.

"Just do it," Kate gritted out.

"On three. One, two…" Between the two of them, they managed to get her up onto the table, though sweat beaded Kate's skin by the time she was there. Merlin helped her out of the grey coat, then took a pair of scissors to her pant leg.

"Hope you weren't fond of those," he said as he tossed the length of fabric away.

Kate didn't answer, her eyes sliding closed as the pain tried to drag her down into a familiar dark place.

Merlin clamped his hand on her should, tethering her to consciousness. "Stay with me, Kate," he urged.

"Not a soldier," she murmured. "Can't stand it."

"You're going to be fine. Just stay awake until Annie gets back," he said. He tried to say it soothingly, but the harsh edge of worry cut through.

"'m trying," Kate mumbled.

"Kate….I…." Merlin began, stumbling over his words.

She felt the sizzle of energy across her skin as Annie jumped back. "Pull up that end table," she heard the doctor snap, cutting Merlin off ruthlessly.

Kate dragged her eyes up. Annie was holding a tray of shining silver instruments in blue-gloved hands. Each tool was wrapped in its own plastic packaging, preserving it in a sterile environment.

Annie set down the tray and picked up a bag filled with saline. "Get a rack," she snapped to Merlin while grabbing one of Kate's arms and twisting to expose the delicate underside. She flicked the cap off of a tiny needle and expertly slid it into the vein showing just beneath the skin. Merlin returned and thunked a coat rack down next to the table. Annie hung the bag up, adjusting the line to a fast drip.

She didn't say a word as she picked up a tiny vial filled with clear liquid. Snapping the cap off a syringe, she turned the vial upside down and jabbed the needle through the protective rubber top.

"Kidnapping an anesthesiologist to put you under while I take care of the damage would take too long," she informed Kate as she drew down on the plunger, filling the needle with clear liquid. "So I'm going to give you something for the pain." The needle squelched free, and Annie slid it into the port on the IV feed.

Kate nodded her head slightly, not even caring what Annie was injecting her with.

"I need to change and scrub. I'll be back in five minutes," the doctor said before vanishing.

"She can't keep jumping like that," Kate said, feeling something cold and soothing sliding into her veins. "She'll crash."

"The good doctor is a grown woman with two degrees," Merlin groused. "She knows what her limits are."

They waited in silence. Kate knew Merlin was pacing; she could hear his footsteps. But they seemed to be moving away, becoming more and more removed. The world grew fuzzy, like someone had wrapped everything in cotton.

For some reason, that made her giggle.

Particles stirred, energy sweeping across her like a storm. She peeked her eyes open.

Annie appeared, wrapped almost entirely in blue fabric with her hands carefully held up to prevent accidental contact with the surroundings. Blue, skintight gloves covered her from fingertip to forearm.

"You're blue," Kate muttered, reaching out to touch the figure that wavered in her vision.

Merlin slapped her wrist back down to the table. Kate stared at it, feeling her eyes go wide with surprise. "Wow, Annie, you got me the good stuff. I didn't feel that at all."

"Good." Annie reached over and plucked a dark orange swab from the tray. Bracing one hand on Kate's leg, she brushed the iodine solution all around the wound. Once it was sterilized to her satisfaction, she picked up a pair of forceps.

The room spun around her, and Kate let her head drop back against the table. Her vision fuzzed, turning the ceiling into a blanket of soft clouds. Kate chuckled and turned her head to look at Merlin.

"I like flying," she confided.

Merlin stared at her, then turned to glare at Annie. Kate could almost see the flames coming out of his eyes.

"What the hell did you give her?"

"A generous dose of morphine," the surgeon responded, never taking her eyes from her work. Kate glanced down just in time to see her gingerly remove a sliver of metal.

"Now, which one of you is going to tell me what happened?" Annie asked, picking black thread out of the wound.

"There was a field!" Kate gasped, the frowned. "Not like a field, grassy field, but a wave field. A field of waves that were….waving. They were oshillating. Osfilating." She scowled. That wasn't right. "Os-uh-lay-ting." Perfect. "I couldn't break reality. Did you know we can break reality?" she asked.

Annie glanced up at Merlin, glaring. "You got her into trouble again, didn't you?"

Kate stared. "Your eyes are like black holes," she whispered.

"The Paladin's stole Kate's research. She wanted it back," Merlin growled. "We had no way of knowing that they had some magnetic field that would stop her from jumping away."

"You sent her into the lion's den, and you wonder why things went wrong." Her voice could have cut steel.

There was something important, something Kate was forgetting. The past hour was morphing into a terrible drugged nightmare. She should be scared about…. fire. Playing with fire? Who had been playing with fire?

Not fire, something orange. Black and orange.

She reached for Annie's sleeve, glancing down in surprised when her hand didn't budge. She had forgotten Merlin had pinned her wrist to the table.

Think. She had to think through the mist in her mind. In its own way, the drug-induced haze scared her more than a low fog bank in the Bermuda Triangle. Uninhibited jumpers has a way of getting themselves in trouble.

Black and orange. What had she seen recently that was black, orange, and heart-stoppingly scary? The very memory of it still made her blood chill in her veins….

Biohazard.

"Annie, what kind of stuff is biohashard level three?" Kate asked, slurring some of the words together.

Annie's entire body tensed. It was subtle motion, almost hidden by the enveloping gown she wore, but Kate knew her well enough to pick out the crinkling of skin around her eyes and the sudden lines around the knuckles of her gloves.

"Biosafety level three is used for the nasty stuff that has a cure. Plague, rabies, yellow fever, West Nile virus, and SARS, to name a few."

"_PLAGUE?_" Kate gasped. "Like, plague, plague? Bubonic plague? _The Black Death_?!"

"Precisely. Where did you come across a biosafety level three lab?" The question was posed in a deceptively casual tone.

"The Pa-la-dins have one in their basement," Kate said carefully, then gasped. "You don't think they have plague down there, do you?"

"I don't know what they have, but I'd stake my life on the fact that it's not good," Annie muttered, her forceps tugging a long black thread out of the wound. Kate gasped as she felt the string draw against the exposed muscle.

The wound clean to her satisfaction, the doctor tugged the hole closed with a few pairs of butterfly stitches.

"That's everything on this side," Annie said. "Roll over so I can get the back."

Merlin helped Kate turn over, her strength sapped by the drug running through her veins. She slowly crossed her arms under her head, biting her lip as she felt Annie begin to poke at the wound.

"Is it bad?" she asked, knowing she sounded like a child but unable to fully comprehend it enough to change her tone. "A bullet like that expands the air around it, causes conshusive… coe…. Con-cuh-sive damage, right?"

"Surprisingly, large caliber bullets cause less of such damage than a smaller caliber," Annie said.

"Oh, and why is that?" Merlin asked sarcastically.

"Because physics," Kate grumbled into the table. "And air."

There was silence for a bit, as Annie finished cleaning the wound. She closed the hole with more butterfly bandages. Merlin helped Kate turn over again, and Annie wound gauze around her leg.

Wound treated and bound, Annie began to collect her bloodied tools. Merlin left Kate's line of sight, and a minute later she saw the light of a computer screen.

Kate floated, almost able to see the sparkling clear water all around her, hear the soft rumble of gently waves on a flat beach.

"We need to go back," Annie said, that frostbitten tone intruding into her warm paradise.

"Yeah," Kate murmured. "Back to the beach." She got her hands beneath her and started to lift herself off the table. The IV line caught on her shoulder, tugging slightly. She reached for the tape her elbow. "I'll drive."

A heavy hand landed on her shoulder and pushed her back down. Startled, Kate twisted her head and looked up into a pair of velvet black eyes.

"_No. Jumping._"

Merlin rushed over from whatever he had been doing at his computer. "Yes, Kate, don't jump. We don't want a repeat of your 21st birthday, now do we?"

"That was your fault," Kate slurred as she let her heavy head drop back down. Her head clunked against the metal table. "Ow."

"What was the rule you came up with?" Merlin asked, with fake naivety.

"No jumping if in…. in… inibre… uh…" Big word. It was a big word. Clever little saying. Why couldn't she remember?

"'No jumping is inebriated, intoxicated, or otherwise impaired'," Merlin filled in for her.

"Right. Enebration."

She heard the soft rustle of moving cloth as the two stepped away from the table.

"Is she supposed to be this….high?" Merlin asked.

"The morphine is having stronger effects than I anticipated," Annie's honey-coated voice responded. "With the metabolism of jumper, it is always difficult to tell."

"Are you doing alright?"

"I am fine. It takes more than a few jumps to cause me to crash."

"And Kate?"

"I cleaned out the wound and closed the entrance and exit holes. She should keep her weight off that leg for a few days, but after that she should be fine. Unfortunately, we don't have that kind of time. We need to go back, and Kate's the only one that can get us there. Now."

"_Right now?!_" Merlin screamed. "Are you serious? You just dosed her on morphine, dug around in a hole _through her leg_, and now you want to take her back into the lion's den?"

"You were the one willing to send her there in the first place," Annie pointed out in Death's own voice.

"When she was coherent," Merlin shot back. "For fuck's sake, she's humming _Blister in the Sun_ right now!"

Was she? She didn't think she was…. Kate focused on listening.

"…._I'm high as a kite….. I just might…. Stop to check you out_…." Well how about that. She was. She cleared her throat, stopping the flow of the song.

"She's slurring her words and you want to take her into a Paladin lab!" hissed Merlin.

"The fact that they're growing something can only be bad," Annie said in a low voice. "You cannot imagine the destructive potential of biological warfare gone wrong."

"'_Biological warfare'?_" Merlin spluttered.

"Do you really think they're doing anything else?"

"I don't know!"

"Neither do I. We need to find out. Kate's seen the lab; she can jump directly there now."

"She's been shot and drugged," Merlin insisted.

"Annie's right." Kate's weak voice silence the argument. She spoke slowly, trying to give her fogged mind time to string the words together in a coherent pattern. "What they were doing is probably bad news. But we have to do something about the anti-jump field."

"The what?" She could hear the scowl in Annie's voice.

"The Paladin's have a magnetic field that can keep us from jumping," Merlin told her in a low voice.

"So that's how you were slow enough to get shot," Annie teased Kate, a small smile in her voice.

There was a moment of silence, then Merlin sighed. "I still have the link to their computer systems. I could hack it and turn off the field again. You would probably have enough time to jump in and get a sample or whatever it is you biologists do."

"At least it's actually based in logic, unlike coding," Kate snapped. Or tried to snap. The retort came out sluggishly, her mind slogging through mud to figure out all the ideas that were whizzing around the room.

"Kate's metabolism is fast enough that she should be functional in an hour or so," Annie said. "And I need to balance my sugar levels." Kate raised her head as the doctor reached down, self-consciously tapping the small plastic box attached to the waistband of her scrubs. A thin plastic cord snaked out of the box and vanished under the aquamarine hem.

Something Merlin said finally worked its way through the mist. Kate gasped and tried to sit up quickly, slinging her legs off the table at the same time. Her body listed precariously to the side, and spots swam in front of her eyes as blood rushed from her head.

A strong arm wrapped around her shoulders, anchoring her to the table. Kate looked over at Annie, blinking to clear her vision. "Thanks." She looked over at Merlin, the technowizard once again in front of his computer. "My data?"

Teeth flashed in the glare from the computer screens. "Downloading as we speak."

Kate breathed a sigh of relief, then beamed up at the doctor. "So, when do we leave?"


	7. Plague, Inc

"Remind me again, why is this necessary?" Kate asked from her chair. Her voice mirrored her appearance: pale, pinched, and pained. The drugs that kept the agony at bay had worn off, and Annie had refused to give her more.

"We need protection," Annie said patiently. She searched through a closet of bright orange hazmat suits, looking for something that would fit over the bulk bandage currently wrapped around Kate's leg.

Annie had waited just long enough for Kate's logical reasoning to return, then had directed her to jump them to the University of Texas's biocontainment facility. Annie had done her Ph.D. work in microbiology and infectious diseases there, and had known that the facility would have the equipment that she insisted they needed.

"I know that," Kate insisted patiently. She had jumped in a chair to keep her weight off of her wounded leg. "I want to know why it has to be done _now_."

"Because we need to know what they're doing."

"It can't wait until tomorrow? When I don't want to saw my leg off to stop the pain?" It came out as a whine. Kate bit her lip. Sounding that pathetic was almost as bad as being in this much pain.

"I know you're hurting, but I've already almost overdosed you on Advil, and I can't give you anything that would make you loopy. I don't want to be jumped into a wall."

Kate shuddered involuntarily. "I don't even think that's possible," she muttered rebelliously. "Interatomic forces between molecules seems to prevent the splitting of spacetime within a solid object." Her voice sounded as pale and pinched as she was sure her face was. "It doesn't seem to be a problem on the initiating end, likely since the jump field energizes any solid matter enough to weaken the interatomic bonds and excite the molecules to create enough thermal motion for the object to come apart….."

"Kate."

"Yes?"

"Stop it."

Kate sighed dramatically. "Plebeian."

"Nerd." Annie stepped away, drawing a full body suit out of the closet. "As to why we have to go now, it's simple. Biochemistry takes time. The minimum time it takes to make a vaccines from a known virus is six months, if you don't mind the inevitable mistakes that come from rushing science. If they are so close to completion that they're mass producing this agent, then we need to know what it is. The sooner the better. So, while I appreciate how much pain you must be in, we have to go now." She pulled a suit out of the closet. "This should work."

It took both of them and the chair to maneuver Kate into the suit. Fine tremors were running through her muscles, sweat beading on her skin, by the time they were done. The hazmat suit completely wrapped her up in orange nylon. The self-contained air unit rested against her lower back, the weight both comforting and disconcerting at the same time. Comforting to know that it was there, protecting her against any airborne bioagents. Disconcerting to know that it was needed, that the air itself could kill her.

She left the hood open as Annie chose her own, the doctor sliding into the suit with an ease that spoke of long experience. Kate knew that she had done some HIV work for the Ph.D. part of her dual degree, but Annie had never mentioned specifics.

The one time Kate had asked, she had been glared into submission.

Annie stepped up to her, zipping the hood closed and starting the air filter for Kate before activating her own. She reached down, picking up a bag completely wrapped in protective plastic.

"Ready," she said, offering Kate her shoulder. Kate moved slowly, wrapping one arm over Annie's shoulders, resting her weight on her friend.

"Merlin?" Kate asked, her voice echoing slightly in the hood. Her breath misted lightly on the clear face panel.

The communicator buzzed, once again tucked into her ear. "I've got the connection. Shutting the field down in three… two… one… down."

Taking a breath she jumped, dragging Annie along with her. They flickered into existence between the stacks of bottles. Annie looked around, slowly pivoting as she took in the cavernous room.

"You look like you hadn't believed me," Kate said, the plastic hood hollowing out her voice. She felt sweat break out across her forehead as Annie released her, and her full weight landed on her injured leg.

"I believed you," Annie murmured. "I had just hoped that, for once in your life, you were wrong."

"Hey, I'm wrong a lot," Kate objected. Her muscles trembled, and she slowly sank down to the floor. "For instance, there was that one time when I said that quarks couldn't possibly…."

"Not the time, Kate," Annie murmured. She walked over to one of the shelves and took a bottle from the rolling racks. She held it up to the lights overhead. A thick coating of slime slicked the inside, warping the light that passed through. A thin layer of magenta liquid, slightly murky, covered the bottom of the bottle as Annie held it on its side.

"What do you think?" Kate asked from her place on the floor. She had slumped over like a stringless marionette as soon as she hit the ground. The shiny tiles on the floor were cold, and the chill felt good on her inflamed leg.

She didn't need to worry about Annie hearing her; Merlin had outfitted them both with earpieces before they left.

"They're making something," Annie murmured. Her voice was low and rich. It was only in her moments of distraction that the icy shields she had melted away, revealing a side of her personality more befitting her name.

"This style of culture is mostly used to collect cellular secretions. Proteins, viruses… that sort of thing."

"Viruses?" Kate asked. An icy wave raced down her spine as her brain helpfully listed off every virus she knew. West Nile, Yellow fever, Ebola, HIV, rabies, flu, Dengue, SARS, herpesvirus, polio, rubella, measles and mumps, every type of pox… The list went on and on.

"Good infectious agents," Annie continued. She almost sounded uninterested. "Can be made transmissible by air, almost undetectable, asymptomatic until it's too late."

"Do they not realize what they're playing with?" Kate groaned.

"Too much tunnel vis-"

The bottle in Annie's hand exploded.

Time slowed as her brain jumped into hyper mode. The world turned crystalline.

Shards of glass shot outward. Pale pink mist blossomed, forming a cloud around Annie's suit-covered form.

Several bottles behind her shattered as well, carving a path straight back before an impact crater unfolded like a blooming rose on the wall behind her.

Annie jerked back just as a second bullet punched through the space she had been. Cracks raced out across the plastic sheet that protected her face, originating from a perfectly circular hole. The back of the hood stretched and crinkled as the bullet tore through, wrecking a second path of destruction through the lab.

Many little _somethings_ pelted Kate's back. Two sharp cracks reached her ears, followed by a crystal cacophony.

Time seemed to speed back up again.

"_Down!_" Annie yelled as she dropped to the ground. Kate twisted around.

The massive sheet of glass that had separated the lab from the rest of the world was gone, lying in a hundred thousand shards across the floor behind her. It must have been broken pieces of glass that she had felt pelting her back.

Standing beyond it, a horribly familiar grey gun clutched in his hand, was Spiky Hair.

_WhathowwhenMOVE! _Her thoughts were moving so fast they blended together.

Kate rolled over on the floor, ignoring the shriek of her torn muscles. On her stomach, she jumped, appearing just behind Annie. Reaching out, she grabbed Annie's ankle just as the doctor snatched another bottle from the bottom of one of the racks. The next instant, they were gone.

Heat washed over them, light beating down from the glaring sun.

Annie leapt to her feet, ripping away the shattered hood. "Where are we?" She demanded, quickly stripping off the neon suit.

"Death Valley," Kate gasped, the face shield immediately fogging up on contact with the harsh desert air. She reached up to wipe away the condensation, but the beads of water had formed on the inside. Under the inexorable sun, the temperature inside the suit was shooting up. She could almost taste the copper tang of the air.

A hand landed on her shoulder, and she felt Annie tugging at the zipper on the suit.

"I have been almost killed far too many times today," Kate grumbled as she peeled off the plastic.

She climbed to her knees and stopped, swaying as blood rushed from her head. A company of bright dots was dancing in front of her eyes, and the ringing in her ears was thunderous.

"….incinerator…. Kate, focus!" Fingers snapped in front of her face.

"Sorry," she mumbled.

Annie sighed. "I know you're tired, but we need to move."

"Right. Machine. Rips reality." She tried to get to her feet.

"You really have to stop with this reality-ripping thing," Annie grumbled, hauling Kate up with an arm under her shoulders. "No one has any clue what you're saying. Now, where are we going?"

"Texas. Incinerator." The roaring in her ears was starting to fade. "Have to go before…"

The misty jumpscar she could still see was ripped open by a grey-clad figure. Kate didn't stay to make out the details. She jumped, dragging Annie along with her.

Sterile white walls and harshly conditioned air replaced the desert panorama. Annie let go long enough to pop open the lid of a dark orange biohazard bin and drop the hazmat suits in. The orange bag, heavy with their stole loot, hung from her fist.

"Now that that's taken care of…" Kate began.

She heard the almost-sound of a jump, felt the wave of displaced air against her back. Without turning she jumped again. The smell of salt water filled her nose, just as her body registered the face that there was no solid surface under her feet.

Annie shouted as gravity took hold, and they fell. There was just enough time to take in the uninterrupted expanse of blue water that surrounded them before Kate jumped again.

They dropped down in a cornfield, landing hard. They hadn't fallen for more than half a second, not enough time to gather a significant amount of kinetic energy. But Kate still stumbled on landing, jagged bolts of pain racing up her leg. She collapsed, sitting down hard. The sudden movement ripped her out of Annie's hold.

The doctor sat down hard at the same time she did. Looking over, Annie blinked her dark eyes. "Where was that?" she asked.

"Marianas Trench," she gasped. Her body was still vibrating from the series of rapid jumps. Deep muscle tremors ran through her thin frame. The expanse of ocean they had seen, thousands of miles from any coast are barely lit by dawn, covered the deepest stretch of seabed on Earth. The Trench, as its deepest point, went almost seven miles down.

Any machine the Paladin's tried to bring through would be utterly, irretrievably lost. If they were able to mobilize _very_ quickly, they might be able to save anyone that went through with it.

Annie grinned wickedly. "That's…"

A Paladin fell out of thin air, landing between them with an audible _thud_.

Kate gaped at him, her mind momentarily blank as Spiky Hair raised his head out of the ground, spitting dirt.

There was only one way he could have followed them.

"He's a _JUMPER!_"

The three stared at each other for one breathless moment. Even Kate's heart seemed to stop in her chest.

The Paladin jumper shifted, and her heart exploded back to life. Adrenaline dumped into her veins, making the world narrow and sharpen.

They all moved at once, flickering in and out of existence. Kate vanished from her spot on the ground, popping into the space next to Annie. Her hand was already reaching out, seeking. But Annie was gone, appearing across from her on the far edge of the crop circle they had smashed. The Paladin was now sitting in the place Kate had been only seconds before. He cursed in a British accent, reaching for something on his belt.

Kate didn't wait to see the gun. She jumped again and felt her heart stutter in its rapid rhythm. This needed to end soon; neither she nor Annie could keep this up much longer.

She appeared next to her friend, grabbed Annie's forearm, and jumped again.

Hot concrete beneath her. Annie leapt to her feet and hauled Kate up.

"Go," Kate gasped as the scene changed yet again, from hot city to steaming jungle.

"Get to Merlin." Snow covered ruins of an abandoned Soviet base.

"Get a lightning rod to cover the spot." A hulking, blood red sandstone mountain, surrounded by scrub brush.

"He'll know." Harsh, almost electric cold as rich blue ice hemmed them in.

"Thirty seconds." Rolling yellow dunes, a shock of green marking the location of an oasis in the distance. "Ready?" Annie nodded.

Rich brown soil appeared under her feet as they popped into a vineyard. The two girls leapt apart, and an instant later Annie was gone.

Pain from her wound was a harsh throb, but her brain shoved it aside. Kate took a step to the side of the jumpscar, making sure to keep a mental countdown going in her mind.

It didn't take long. The fabric of spacetime, trying desperately to knit itself back together, rippled and split around the Paladin. He was already looking around, searching for the next jumpscar.

Kate didn't give him a chance to find it.

"Hey, Hair Gel!" She backhanded him hard across the face. His head snapped to side.

"Come and get me," Kate growled. Whirling, she jumped away.

Twenty seconds. She landed on a darkened bridge in Venice, already running. For a pulse-pounding moment, she thought he had stayed and gone after Annie.

Then she heard the almost-sound of a jump, heard him yell. Adrenaline burned away the pain ricocheting up her leg. Kate rounded a corner and jumped.

Fifteen seconds. Kate ran through the open forest, making sure she stayed within sight of the jumpscar. She couldn't afford to lose the Paladin. The towering trees had long ago grown tall enough to block most of the sunlight from reaching the ground. The undergrowth was sparse and the forest floor open, making for easy running.

She felt Spiky Hair follow her, and ducked behind a tree just as she heard the crack of a gunshot. Bark exploded from the side of the tree.

Taking a breath, Kate lunged out from behind the tree and jumped again.

Five seconds. She landed on the beach, storm winds ripping at her clothes, her skin. Kate covered her eyes with a forearm and struggled forward a step. Then two.

The winds beat her back. A strong gust made her stumble backwards…..and into a warm wall of muscle.

One. The Paladin grabbed her shoulder.

Time. Kate let her legs fold, just as she jumped. Connected by touch, the Paladin was dragged through the raging storms of space with her.

Kate purposefully jumped a foot above the floor of Merlin's Avalon. Spiky Hair grunted as he landed hard. Kate's full weight hit his grasp, and she tumbled to the floor.

Just in the nick of time. A lightning cable slice through the space she had been in and wrapped itself around the Paladin. He crashed down, convulsing as electricity raced through him.

"Gotcha," Kate panted.

* * *

_I bet they spent all their evolutionary points on_ that_ upgrade. _

_Thoughts thus far?_


End file.
